This is my attempt at Tom/Sybil as a couple, sometime between the end of S2 and the Christmas Special. Just to be clear: I know Sybil is an incredibly strong, brave woman and I admire her character for that. But I've always thought courage is more related to being able to overcome your fears than to having no fears at all. I don't mean to present her as a weak character, just to show how I imagine Tom and Sybil dealing with the difficulties they might face , always supporting each other. I hope you like it, or at least don't hate it too much!
He knew the moment he opened the door and caught a glimpse of her in the kitchen, in the middle of preparing tea, still in her uniform. It was going to be one of those evenings. At least, he had every intention of making it become one. He approached her from behind and wasted no time in kissing the spot where her neck met her right shoulder and pressing his body to hers.
"Hello," he whispered in his wife's ear.
"Tom," she warned.
"Syb."
"Don't. Not now," Sybil hissed, as he released her, surprised by her reaction.
"Are you alright, darling?", he enquired, in a concerned tone.
"Am I that wanton, Tom, that if I don't accept your advances only once you assume I must be unwell?", she snapped, to her husband's obvious shock.
Sybil closed her eyes for a moment, wanting nothing else but to erase the last few minutes of her life. She caressed his cheek for a moment and apologized.
"I'm sorry, love. It is not a good day, but I shouldn't have talked to you like that. It's just…", she sighed and shook her head.
"Why don't you get changed out of your uniform while I finish with tea?"
Tom was taken aback. It was the first time in their short marriage Sybil had rejected him. It was normal, he considered. Life could hardly be always like their first two weeks of marriage, when they had done absolutely everything in their daily lives with growing dark circles under their eyes and an indelible smile. There was work, and tiredness and simply bad days when circumstances would not be particularly honeymoon-like. He knew that rationally, but still, it hurt. He could not imagine himself rejecting Sybil's advances, no matter how tired or angry he was. She could melt him to the core. She could just call his name provocatively and have him whenever, wherever, however she wanted.
She emerged from their bedroom in her regular clothes and smiled weakly, putting a hand on his shoulder. It was obvious she meant to make up for her words, but did not want it to encourage him to take reconciliation further.
Tom could tell there was trouble eating her. But if there was something he had learnt about his wife, it was not to try to force words out of her. They sat in their small living room, she reading the newspaper in which Tom wrote, as it was her first truly quiet time during the whole day to read about what was going on in the world, him apparently absorbed by a novel that helped him flee from the world of reports of terrible things that seemed to constitude his job lately. That common scene was an ongoing joke between them. Tom teasing her about how they should switch jobs, her giggling while describing Tom's imaginary conversations with the head nurse in her wing of the hospital about Jane Austen novels. It did not happen that night and Tom realised his inability to read any further that the second paragraph on page 35 was matched by his wife's, who had been looking at the same piece of news for the last ten minutes and, he could almost swear, not actually read a word. Surely, there was something going on. It did not take her more than ten minutes to throw the paper and say, with a trembling voice:
"I didn't know it was like that."
"What, love?", he questioned while approaching and embracing her.
"You know Doctor Connelly's sister is a midwife," she began, as her husband nodded. "Today, she sent a boy asking her brother to provide some help, as she thought there might be complications in the birth she was working in at the moment."
"And the help sent was you, wasn't it? Did something terrible happen? I'm completely sure the midwife and you did everything in your hands to help that family. Tell me, Syb," Tom tried to find the way for her to continue.
"No! Oh, dear, no! But, Tom, you don't know, you haven't seen. The way that woman cried in pain. There was a moment she honestly believed she was going to die. To die, leaving three young children and a husband she loved. And yet, the only company she would have had in her death bed would have been that of two women she did not know at all. She was alone, and weak, and exhausted, and hopeless and she managed to make a last effort and give birth to a lovely baby girl and fight successfully for her own life."
"That is wonderful then, darling. It was a happy ending and you were there to help it become one. I'm proud of you, I'm so proud of you," he whispered in her ear, tears in his eyes mirroring hers after listening to her emotional experience.
Sybil shook her head.
"You don't understand. When we finished and were alone, I told Miss Connolly I was elated to have had an ending like that for such an eventful birth. And she laughed, Tom, she laughed. I don't think she was trying to make fun of me, but she said it had not been half as problematic as she had expected and she was sorry she had made me leave the hospital only for that."
There were tears flooding her eyes and all her husband could manage to do was to caress her hair and keep listening, as it was obvious she had not finished.
"It was a normal birth. THAT was a normal birth. That was NORMAL. I walked all the way home with that woman's cries ringing in my ears, with the way she looked terrified in my mind. I cannot do that, Tom. I can't. I kept imagining myself surrounded by strangers, afraid for my child's life and my own, with you being kept away from me and not a single familiar hand to hold mine. I am not brave enough, I don't have the strength beyond any logic that woman showed today, I won't be able to fight."
He started complaining:
"You are the bravest and the strongest person I know, Syb. I fail to understand how you cannot see it yourself."
"I am not," she continued, covering his mouth with her soft hand. "I am terrified of giving birth. I am terrified of getting pregnant. I'm terrified of already being with child just as we are talking now," she confessed, biting her lower lip. "It's not that I didn't want to be with you when you got home. I always want to be with you," Sybil assured, looking Tom in the eye to show she did mean it. "It's only that I'm afraid. After all I saw during the war, I didn't fancy myself this weak, I'm so sorry."
Tom hugged her tightly, her beautiful face against his shirt, his hands caressing strands of her hair.
"I can't promise you it will be alright when it happens, love. But I'll promise you this: when you are expecting, you'll decide what to do. We'll go to Downton if that is what you want, and you'll have the doctors you've always known to deliver the baby. And your mother shall be delighted and receive you with open arms and be with you the whole time. And they'll have to tear my hand apart from yours and have Carson drag me out of the room by the time they decide men should go wait outside."
Sybil smiled a little at the image of her husband and Carson in such a situation.
"But Dublin is our home now," she protested softly.
"And hopefully Dublin won't go anywhere while we are out of the country for a short time. And, before you keep finding faults to our plan, we'll find a way not to lose our current jobs. And, if we don't, I don't expect all newspapers and medical centres to disappear while we are away, do you?"
She shook her head and kissed his lips softly.
"and…" he tried to continue.
"Is here more to it? It seems quite a complex plan for such a short time of thinking," she teased.
"There is more," he smiled. "I can't imagine what it felt like for you today, I'm sorry, love, but I can listen and understand. And, you know," his tone changed to a huskier one, as he felt her relaxing more and more against him, her hand caressing his shoulder, "there are other things we can do and could not end up in pregnancy."
Sybil could not help a blush creeping up her cheeks. It was not as violent as the one resulting from that conversation in Liverpool that accidentally ended up giving her much more information on what that part of marriage was going to be like than she had bargained for, but still.
"I quite like the other things, too," she responded, sitting on his lap and pressing her lips to the corner of his mouth.
"I've noticed," he teased.
"And there I was, thinking you were full of yourself when you told me, back in Downton, that you were waiting for me to run away with you. I couldn't even imagine how bad it could get!" she jokingly poked his chest.
"You had no idea, milady," he grinned.
That's it for now. I might leave the story like this or add a couple more one-shots somehow related to this one. Please, review if there's anything you'd like to comment, good or bad!